


Before You Go

by TundrainAfrica



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Post-Canon, Shingeki no Kyojin Chapter 132: Wings of Freedom Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29734284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TundrainAfrica/pseuds/TundrainAfrica
Summary: "How long before the ocean does its job? Levi wasn’t a geologist, he wasn’t a scientist. He wouldn’t know.But the puddles with depths Levi couldn’t yet fathom were alarming. The faint sounds of waves and the smell of the ocean that he so easily traced to the blue that stretched put in front of them, beyond the barren wetlands were telling him something else.He had to hurry. When the ocean takes back their land, Hange might just be going with them."Levi ponders a commander’s self esteem issues while recovering a body. Written to "Before You Go" by Lewis Capaldi.
Relationships: Levi Ackerman & Armin Arlert, Levi Ackerman/Hange Zoë
Comments: 17
Kudos: 64
Collections: Tumblr Prompts and Oneshots (Tundrainafrica)





	Before You Go

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: hey i found your blog and read alot of your fanfic especially levihan (lol im really dying inside for what happen in ch. 132) Can you write this scene, after they destroyed eren's gigiantic skeleton titan. Levi want to search Hange's body whereabout? And planning to have her to have a proper burial? I know this is freaking sad but uWu. (I'm sorry if my english so sucks. Not my mother tongue). Thanks!
> 
> Songfic written to Before You Go by Lewis Capaldi and a Companion fic to Clockwork

It was raining hard when Levi first thought about it.

The sky outside was darker and only served to make Levi feel more alone. The nurses had left one of the lights on, maybe an attempt to give him some semblance of company when they were busy dealing with other work.

The dim light in the room, when Levi could have sworn it was only past eight in the evening, only served to remind him that there wasn’t much of anyone coming to see him soon. His only companions until the break of dawn, until after he finishes breakfast, were all lifeless and any animation would have to be fueled by his own imagination.

But Levi was tired. The war had left him tired, injured and only barely recovering. On the worst days, his left knee would ache so badly he could barely even sit up. Other days, his right hand was shaking, reminding of the explosion only a few months ago.

Sometimes, imagination was something only the hopeful could engage in. Levi was far from hopeful, the only things he could tap into then were memories of a life before and the stimuli that forced themselves onto him so violently he had no choice but to watch, listen and feel it.

When the room was dark, save for only a dim light at the corner of the room, Levi found himself listening instead to the rain pattering outside the window. Laughably, he had to notice that it pattered more loudly than he had ever heard it since they came back to Paradis. What else was there to fixate on when it was just the white walls in front of him?

He pressed his right hand to the window and focused on how the rain pounded against the glass. He noticed how the window would recoil from it. His hand was still recovering and consequently, any small movement or force was enough for him to feel a little pain. And there, he felt it, he felt the force of the pounding of the rain on his fingertips, he felt the way it sent subtle flickers of pain spidering up to his wrists.

And with every flicker of pain, with the way the water splashed onto the window, taking away with it the drops that formed on the window pane, before Levi could appreciate the complex shapes that had formed on the glass, Levi started to realize something else.

The rainy season was nearing. _If it hadn’t already come then._

The cold dry winter had left and with it, the rainy days of spring had arrived to take its place. As Levi occupied himself mourning the loss of the clusters of raindrops as they came, he started to realize something was getting washed away. Farther and farther away. .

Something else, something far more important than the intricate shapes the raindrops formed, could be swimming away at that moment.

_Or maybe she could still be hanging on by a thread._

She shouldn’t be so easily washed away. She wasn’t a raindrop, she wasn’t as temporal as the clusters and the shapes that formed on the pane. But still, Levi had learned long ago that even the most powerful could break, even the most sturdy can dissipate into thousands of pieces and flow away so easily with the rain.

And the rain wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. Spring brought with its own entrance, life. But it had always brought with itself rain, rains so strong it washed away whatever traces of a dead and dry winter remained past the coldest months.

And it had him thinking. It had him looking back at her. Even if she had always been strong, even if she had always been so sturdy, so full of life before, would she continue to hold on?

Even when the water starts to pile up as puddles, even when the waves that come with continuing rains only get stronger. _Would she hold on?_

Levi liked to think she would hold on. Just like she did, until that last moment up in the air. Just like before she had said those last words ‘let me go will you?’

Besides, she had already mentioned it as a passing joke more than a few years ago. And somehow in the darkness, that one memory had ended up lulling him to sleep.

* * *

“I expected you to be gone for at least a few days.”

“Are you talking about me bringing his remains back?”

 _Erwin’s remains._ At that point, he didn’t want to associate what he had found in the old house in Shiganshina with a name. It was unrecognizable having been left for months while they had cleaned out the titans in the outer wall, in preparation for their project to help get the citizens back out to Shiganshina. Remembering Erwin through memories full of life, he could at least pretend Erwin was alive somehow.

Hange nodded. “ I knew you had to do that so I guess it helped to manage my expectations about when you’d be back expecting you’d be gone for at least a week. It worked. I was pleasantly surprised to see you back less than 24 hours after you left.”

“I rode fast. I didn’t want to be gone for too long either.” Levi admitted.

“I’m glad he’s back though,” Hange said. “It was painful seeing the state of his body then but… He really deserves the highest honors.”

“He does,” Levi said.

It had been almost a week since he had arrived home with Erwin’s remains. There had been a ceremony, a few hours long and maybe a little tacky of a send off, something much larger than Erwin would have liked. Somehow, witnessing a farewell ceremony to their commander had seemed appropriate and for Levi, despite being aware of Erwin’s preferences, had found it comforting at the least.

That conversation dissipated into nothing quickly and Levi seamlessly went back to whatever paperwork was in front of him, while looking back at the happenings of the past few days.

“Levi?”

“You okay?” It had become almost instinct since Erwin’s death to be at Hange’s beck and call. She had never been one to call his attention. She preferred to do stuff herself. Yet, when they were the only two veterans left, Levi had known her long enough to understand that she too at least needed someone there.

And the few times she called out to him, Levi was sure those were the times when she had needed him the most. Hange had rested her hand on her cheek, she was holding her pen close to one of the papers on her desk, as if she had been writing midway when she called out to him.

“You’re tired?” Levi pressed.

“I just had a random thought. It’s probably pretty weird to think about this now honestly. It might even be rude…”

“You never cared about things being rude before,” Levi said lightly. A few seconds later, he did start to wonder whether that had sounded insulting.

Hange only gave him a playful yet forced smile in return. “You never cared if what I said was rude anyway because you were probably worse than me.”

Levi dropped his own pen on the table and settled back on his own desk, keeping his eyes trained on Hange. “Just say it. I’m sure I’ve said worse things than you.”

“I just thought about it during the ceremony… I was thinking what was going on there was way too tacky, even for Erwin to appreciate.”

“I thought the same thing.”

“And I’m the commander now right? What if… If… or when I die? What’s gonna happen? Are they going to do something like that?”

“Why are we talking about your death?”

“There’s going to be a war Levi, I wanna be prepared.”

“Prepared for what? Prepared to die?”

Hange dropped her shoulders. “You know what? We have a lot of work to do. I’ll keep this short. When I die, I don’t want a tacky burial if I can’t even be half the commander everyone before me was.”

“What the fuck Hange----”

Hange raised her voice, as if it had been her intention the whole time to interrupt him. “When I die, just burn my body, trample on it, drop me to the dogs or the trees or into some mass grave, whatever is nearer.”

Before Levi could even argue, Hange dropped her head back down to whatever paperwork she was dealing with again. Levi had known her enough to know when she looked at papers and work like that, it was as if she had drifted off to another world. It wouldn’t be worth arguing.

Her tone had been loud, it had been confident, it had been sure. But at the same time, it had some lightness to it. Maybe after that, Levi could have expected a laugh and it wouldn’t have felt weird at all.

 _Was it a joke?_ There were enough crumbs at least in her demeanor then, and the light humming that followed that it could have been one.

She never brought it up again after all, so quickly shifting to conversations on plans to open up or speculations on the army of Marley. And even in those few moments where Levi did consider bringing it up again, he never did.

It was either a terrifying or an unnecessary question. Levi couldn’t tell and since then, he never really did bother looking back to it to see whether it had been one or the other.

 _Besides, she wouldn’t die that easily_. And the question and the emotional stress it caused him then would be for naught.

* * *

“You seem much better today. Maybe the doctors will allow you to go out in a week or so if you get better days like this more often.” Armin chimed as he entered the hospital room, much earlier than usual. For Levi though, it had felt like Armin could have come earlier.

“Armin, I wanna go somewhere.” Levi didn’t even wait for Armin to settle down in the chair or drop a paper bag on his side table.

“Sure, we could request a day out. I could ask the doctors for you… What do you have in mind?”

“The port.”

“The port?” Armin looked deep in thought.

“Our port. The port in Paradis,” Levi pressed.

“You mean.. _That_ port?

“Did you think I meant anything else?” Levi asked, almost irritably. He at least tried to hide it. Armin was smarter than that, why had it taken him that long to figure it out?

“I mean… Because... Captain… You know there’s no port anymore. The rumbling completely destroyed it… Besides why would you want to go there?”

Eventually Levi did figure it out. Armin wasn’t at all slow. When Levi made eye contact with Armin, he did see after all, the wrinkle in his nose and his furrowed brows as if he was deep in thought.

It was as if Armin didn’t just want to believe it himself.

 _Then I’ll give you no choice but to believe it then._ “I wanna get back Hange’s remains.”

* * *

“Here’s the port.” It was Armin who called it out.

Although Levi had been raring to see it, it had taken him more than a few minutes to sit up on the horse to get a good view. They had been riding through wastelands for what could have been days. And for most of that time, Levi had been biting at the inner sides of his cheeks, stopping himself from whimpering or even screaming at the violent rattle that came with the rhythmic galloping of the horse. It was his own skill, his own experience and mostly his own grit that got him still conscious despite the unbearable pain the whole journey had caused him.

Armin had been right. His body was still far from healed. But there was one truth that Levi held on that was much more important than what Armin had been trying to hammer into him since he first made clear his attentions and goals that one morning in the hospital.

 _How long will Hange wait?_ The smell of the rain was still subtle but Levi was sure within the next month the scent would only get stronger. And with it, the rains would only get stronger and more and more frequent. The tides and the rivers would only run faster, taking everything along with them.

_And Hange might just be one of that ‘everything.’_

That was what had him holding on despite Armin’s protests. That was what had Levi saying one final ultimatum. “You can choose to help me or you can choose to stop me. I’ll find a way to do this Armin, even if I have to do it alone.”

At that moment as the horse did slow to a canter, Levi was grateful Armin had insisted in coming with him. He was close to passing out. It was as if his body was interpreting that slowed gallop as some sort of reprieve to take advantage of.

“We can set up camp here first.”

“No… Let’s look around,” Levi protested. By then he had already sat up once again on his horse.

The ride to the port had been excruciating. Everything around him then had only served to emphasize how barren the rumbling had left everything outside the walls. The forests were gone, the train that ran through the walls had been reduced to nothing more than scrap metal and wood.

The barren view and the smatters of ruins and carnage among them, small hints to what could have stood there before had seemed endless, blending one on top of the other as they sped through them on horses. It seemed unchanging.

When Armin helped him down from his horse, one foot on the ground then the other, Levi was easily able to distract himself with the view. What had opened up in front of him had him setting aside any inhibitions and any survival instincts. He had one mission.

The dry barren soil, the smatters of carnage and among them all had been expected. But the signs that the area used to open up to a wide ocean only a month ago were apparent.

It still did open up to the ocean. But the blue was a little farther away from the remains of bricks that mixed with the sand and the soil, yet stuck out in weird shapes. For a while, it did have Levi disconcerted.

_Has the ocean ever been this far? Am I looking for her in the right places?_

As if he read Levi’s mind then, Armin was quick to explain.

The titans had flattened the land, forcing a lot of the top soil into the ocean. On top of that, the movement of the tides had left the area looking more like a marsh than an ocean.

The land shone with a glint, hinting to a natural moisture. Water settled in seemingly meticulously placed depressions on the ground. When Levi did look closely, when he thought back to the movement of the colossal titans and how it could have created such a view over time, he did start to understand what those depressions actually were.

The shapes were almost unrecognizable, far from the feet that had made them. But Levi was sure, those were footprints. And the puddles that had formed inside them were the beginnings of the ocean’s own mission to take back their own.

 _How long before the ocean does their job?_ Levi wasn’t a geologist, he wasn’t a scientist. He wouldn’t know.

But the puddles with depths Levi couldn’t yet fathom from his place next to Armin were alarming. The faint sounds of waves and the smell of the ocean that he so easily traced to the blue that stretched put in front of them, beyond the barren wetlands were telling him something else.

He had to hurry. _When the ocean takes back their land, Hange might just be going with them._

_I fell by the wayside, like everyone else_

_I hate you, I hate you, I hate you_

_But I was just kidding myself_

“We should rest first. I’ll set up camp.”

“No. We don’t have a lot of time. I’m going ahead.” Levi looked around him, willed himself to remember at least where the port building should have been. The bricks and the mortar that stuck out of the ground in clusters were a good vantage point. And it a good starting point he was willing to take.

He could hear Armin’s own protests as he walked ahead into the wetlands. The soft loam below him wasn’t too good of a foundation, a few times Levi felt his own legs shake as the land swallowed his feet.

The disconcerting view, the lack of reference points and the soft ground below him that only made him teether and only made his head spin a little faster as he walked could have been giving their own message, as if begging him to give up.

The wind blew on his face making it much harder for him to see. A few times it had made him lose his balance as he walked. As it brushed past his ears though, he could have sworn he heard that message once again.

_When I die, just burn my body, trample on it, drop me to the dogs or the trees or into some mass grave, whatever is nearer._

Levi was a fighter. That had only been one memory in many others, just a few half hearted words said among many others and he clung onto that fact. Even with everything at once telling him to just give up, Levi had other memories keeping him going.

_When I die, I don’t want a tacky burial if I can’t even be half the commander everyone before me was._

“You were a great commander,” he whispered. And brushing aside the words the strong and cruel winds carried with them had been easy soon after. He just had to look back to what had made Hange worth the fight in the first place.

Levi trudged on.

_Our every moment, I start to replace_

_'Cause now that they're gone_

_All I hear are the words that I needed to say_

* * *

“Just let it out.” His words had rolled so smoothly out of his tongue then. Yet at the same time, he went through pains to keep it as just that.

 _At her lowest, right then on the floor crying, did she want anything else?_ Levi placed his hand on her shoulder and gripped it a little harder, hoping that it was enough to send any other message, messages he couldn’t easily verbalize.

 _I’m here for you._ Did she want anyone with her?

 _I won’t leave you._ Was he assuming she didn’t want to be alone?

 _Things will get better._ But what if they don’t? He didn’t want to make any empty promises either.

The tears eventually saw their end. And Hange stood up and laughed, as if everything had just been a horrible dream. She stretched her back behind her, letting out a loud yawn. For a second, Levi could pretend that the tears in her eyes had all been just an aftermath of that strong yawn.

“No time for breaks Levi. Moblit and Erwin aren’t here to sort these paperwork out anymore. It’s our job now,” she said.

“Rest is still important. You haven’t even slept since we got back here.” Levi pointed out.

“Who needs sleep?” Hange said, avoiding his gaze. “You can go ahead. I’ll finish up for the night.”

“I can stay.” Levi suspected there were still things he could have seen if he forced himself to look at her straight in the eye then.

“No. Please don’t.” Hange looked away. And with that, all attempts of Levi to get a better angle, to grip on that vulnerability and emotion before she buried it back down were unsuccessful.

That night had ended with him quietly walking out.

* * *

_No, I’ll stay….I’m not leaving until you promise to take a break. I’ll sit in this office right here with you until you realize that you have to take care of yourself too._

“Captain, are you okay?”

“Yes. I am.”

“You want me to repeat the plan?”

Levi nodded. “Please.”

“Look, I know you might still be tired from last night… We can re---”

“Just repeat the plan Armin.”

“We can’t do what we did last night. You’ll just tire yourself out.”

“We need to work fast.”

“But we need to work efficiently.” Armin said. He took out a makeshift map he had drawn. “You see this area, we survey this whole area, where the soil and the sand are wettest. That’s because we’re sure here in this area, the loam constantly mixing so most likely if we dig around here we might find something . It will take us a few days but that transition, that line between the wet soil and the dry soil, that’s the circumference we follow. Her re--- er… Hange should be around this area. We have enough supplies to last us a week but after this we go home.”

 _After this we go home._ For some reason, those words made Levi shudder. _No, we finish this now._

Armin had suggested at first they invite Jean and Mikasa along. _The more hands, the easier the work._

 _But if you invite Jean and Mikasa, you invite Connie by extension. Then maybe Reiner, then Annie…_ And the list went on. Recovering her remains though had been a task Levi would have preferred to do himself. It was an intimate moment. He had felt almost similarly picking up Erwin’s remains in Shiganshina.

Armin had been a necessary exception. Levi wasn’t in the best condition. From what he could tell their first whole day there, recovering Hange was going to be like shooting in the dark with the amount of obstacles. And with his current state, he might actually just die there.

Levi watched as Armin surveyed the ground, shovel in one hand, paper on the other. Occasionally Armin did look back at Levi.

Levi kept his footsteps slow but sure as he followed behind Armin. God forbid, any misstep on his end could end with him losing his balance, injuring himself further. That might actually convince Armin to put his foot down and cancel the expedition altogether.

“Hange I’m coming.”

_Well, time can heal but this won't._

* * *

“You're lazy. You're fucking lazy. You don't have the time. You have work to catch up on.”

Levi had overheard that rant and had traced it back to her long before he even turned the corner to find her leaning so heavily on the large oak tree at the back of town. He had heard it enough and he had been with her enough to recognize her voice almost instantly.

That was the first time he had ever felt her scold herself so strongly. She had seemed like a free bird to him most of the time they knew her.

 _Maybe it’s just a trick of the ear._ "Hange…Did you buy what you needed?” Levi asked, willing himself to keep a casual tone. “One of the fishermen caught a pretty big catfish. You might like to see it."

"I'm going home,” Hange said, turning towards the road, not even bothering to look at Levi.

"Didnt you want to buy anything?" He wondered if his voice was still as casual as a while ago. Somehow, he could feel that facade almost breaking.

Hange shook her head. "Go get what you need alone. I have work to do."

_When you hurt under the surface_

_Like troubled water running cold_

* * *

_Didn’t you finish your work already last night?_

_Come on, just stay here. I’m gonna need some help carrying the stuff back to the barracks._

_And since it’s on the way to the shop, let’s check out the catfish?_

“The area along the borders are clear, I think we’ve dug enough there.” Armin wiped some sweat off his brow and pushed the shovel into the wet sand beneath him. “Let’s get some lunch.”

Levi kept his eyes trained on the puddles that clustered towards the center. “What if… What if she’s in the water?”

“We can check that after lunch, first things first let’s… Captain, it’s gonna rain…” Soon enough, Levi didn’t hear anything else Armin was saying. The dirt that came with shoveling clung to his wounded knee, a lot of the sand snuck under his fingernails, while others were lining the stumps on his right hand.

The puddle was only a few feet away and with that attainable goal, Levi felt a burst of energy, enough for him to neglect his balance for a second. With some luck, he did manage at least to reach the puddle before falling on his knees.

The puddle was still shallow and crouching just next to it, his body half immersed in the water, Levi started to dig.

His fingers were burning. His injured knee was protesting his awkward position. And a few times, he did find himself losing control and falling head first into the water. His good eye burned, his bandages were soaked.

Armin had mentioned bringing some spare bandages at least. That was the last practical thought Levi allowed himself as he thought back to Hange.

If he wanted to push himself through the pain, he had to remember why he was doing all that in the first place. Boring practical thoughts weren’t the best distractions.

* * *

_So, before you go_

_Was there something I could've said_

_To make your heart beat better?_

_If only I'd have known you had a storm to weather_

Then why didn't you save him? Why couldn't you come up with something? You're the commander right? Why couldn't you be more alert?"

"I should have been more alert."

Levi had been gentle when he pulled Hange away from the woman. As Levi soon found out, the woman’s grip was strong and her nails had dug deep into Hange’s shoulders.

Despite the thick coat she was wearing, Hange hugged herself and felt for her shoulder blades and Levi could see a subtle wince on her face as she did.

Long after they had said their final apologies, walked out of the house and made their way back to the barracks, Hange continued to hold herself close, feeling for what Levi was sure were the nail marks. With the shaken look on Hange’s face, it was all too apparent

"You wouldn't have known. You were out front," Levi said.

“I’m commander now. They expect more from me," Hange explained. "She was right. I should have watched over the people under me more closely. That's all there is to it”

* * *

_Death is unavoidable._

_Of course, she’d be like that, her son died._

_You did a great job getting everyone safely home after that._

“And we wouldn’t have been able to reach the ocean, if it wasn’t for your fucking leadership.” Levi hissed. His throat burned as he said that last part. And for a while, he did feel like he wasn’t in control of his own body.

Maybe it was the fact that his whole body was caked with wet sand and muck, he could have sworn his face was a mess too from the few times he did fall head first into the puddles. Maybe it could have been the stinging pain from the salt water and the sand on his wounds.

Or maybe it could be his body, his fastidious nature protesting such an unnatural environment for such a person with a strong penchant for cleanliness.

“Levi, stop, the rain’s only getting harder.”

And it had been Armin of all people that had to remind him, that the weird sensation on his skin, had been the rain. The drops of water fell and dissipated into the mini puddles on his own skin. And soon, the mini puddles started to disappear from his skin too, replaced by oceans, seas.

In other words, he was completely soaked.

 _The rain’s only getting harder._ “How long do we have?” Levi didn’t wait for an answer.

If Hange wasn’t in the sand, if she wasn’t in the puddles, there was one place they haven’t checked yet. At that point, Levi was desperate.

Levi bolted ahead, into the ocean beyond the wetlands. They still had more than enough time to look through the marshlands and the puddles before whatever remained disappeared with the ocean.

_When the rain goes down harder, when the wind carries with them the waves and take control of the high tides and the low tides, the ocean takes with it what was already in the water._

As the rain started to pour, it gave Levi that boost of adrenaline he needed. The pouring rain spoke, it screamed. It told him of urgencies and time limits.

The rhythmic patter of the rain chanted its own mantra. _You have one chance. Don’t let go of it._

The rain had offered a semblance of calm as he walked. Or maybe it had been his mind scrambling for it, as he set aside the discomforts that came with trudging through wet sand and salt water.

The calm only let those moments play out in his head a little more easily. The many times he did let the calm do its work, it created mirages among the moments that he had regretted. The mirages have been kind enough to give him enough space to decide for himself what to say next.

As quickly as it came, it left. And Levi was reminded he had never said any of those. Maybe that had been the reason

_What were you thinking? Weren’t we inseparable? Didn’t we completely trust each other?_

Their positions in the Survey Corps had only made it difficult. She was a commander. She had lived her whole five years as commander just trying to stay on top of things. Even those few moments of vulnerability had been subdued.

The war was over. There were no threats and enemies to worry about. She wasn’t the commander anymore, there weren’t any social nuances to fret over.

“I’m not approaching you as a commander anymore. You’re my best friend. You’re my treasured companion.”

_You’re the one that got away._

The line where the light blue shifts into a dark blue was fine and if Levi had been looking at the water underneath him and not at the horizon in front of him as he walked straight ahead, maybe he would have stepped back.

His body had moved automatically, his mind focused on the one goal. _Keep moving forward and you just might find her._ As if his mind understood the tall order of the task as to bend down and dig through the rubble, and did not want him trifling with it anymore.

He only noticed it then, when he was below the surface, when Armin’s screams had faded to some distant sound, that the hard ground he searched for as he stepped forward didn’t exist.

Before he knew it, he was falling head first into the depths of the ocean.

The world around him was hazy. The water stung and along the way, he found himself closing his one eye as the stinging pain became almost unbearable. For a while he fought, willing himself to swing back up.

As he reached the bottom though, he had fallen back on something cold, something too smooth to have been part of the natural world.

When Levi thought deeply about it with nothing much else to think about flitting in and out of consciousness, he did start to realize it felt like cold hard metal on his face. It was an almost familiar sensation, familiar enough to be worth the stinging pain on his eye. He opened it to see a glint of silver, even in the dark hazy trenches of the ocean, it stood out.

It was cold to the touch, it was bright. Yet it held a warm familiarity. And even down in the depths of the ocean, he felt comfortable enough to close his eyes once again and settle on the ocean floor.

And around that time, he decided not to fight any longer.

_So, before you go_

_Was there something I could've said_

_To make it all stop hurting?_

_It kills me how your mind can make you feel so worthless_

_So, before you go_

* * *

_Was never the right time, whenever you called_

_Went little, by little, by little until there was nothing at all_

_Our every moment, I start to replay_

_But all I can think about is seeing that look on your face_

“Maybe we should just live here together right Levi? ”

“If we keep running and hiding, where will that get us?...I know you, you wouldn’t stay out of the action. ”

“Yeah, that’s right... I can’t.”

He was lying down on the bed then would only one good eye to look at her with. And maybe it was the beginnings of a fever that had his vision a little blurred then.

But next to the fire, her skin glowed. For a second then, he could have seen an interesting color reminiscent of a blush. Her brows furrowed, her nose wrinkled and if he hadn’t seen her lips curl up, he was sure even from just the look in her eyes, she wasn’t at all happy.

_Sadness? Disappointment? Hange, do you want to run away with me now?_

Everything in that moment was vivid. He could feel his hands shake, he could feel the heat resonating from his body. And he could feel the stinging pain that came with freshly stitched wounds.

But he was still in control of his body then. And as if he knew the importance of that moment, how much those words could have meant to her at that moment, he did speak up.

“Yeah, maybe we should just live together.”

* * *

_Would we be better off by now_

_If I'd let my walls come down?_

The night was cold. His body was resonating some sort of warmth that should have been comforting. Yet he was freezing. And the shivers that spread out to the tips of his toes and his fingers were unsettling.

He was desperately seeking warmth, he was desperately searching for the best position to keep his injured knee from locking, yet to keep his fingers from stinging.

The discomforts and the pain that followed had him thrashing in bed, only making it worse. Along the way, Levi did accept it, no matter what position he takes up on the bed, the pain wouldn’t leave.

Eventually, he did start to realize that maybe it was a punishment. An odd punishment, yet a punishment altogether.

 _Hange was hurting. But I didn’t do anything._ It was as if his body then was protesting his inaction, releasing it in bursts of movements that only made his still-recovering body scream.

The stimuli around him, the pain continued to poke and prod at him mockingly as if to say. ‘You knew she was hurting, but you chose not to do anything.’

And with nothing much to do but roll over in bed, riding through the pain and the discomforts, he found himself occupied, trying to justify the omissions on his head.

Surprisingly, it had been easy. He knew the answer all along. She had been valuable to him after all. Of course, he would think deeply about it.

_I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know what she wanted. Hange was hurting, but did she want a subordinate? Did she want a friend?_

_If I approached her as a friend then, would I have been undermining her authority as commander?_

_If I approached her as a commander, would I have seemed too cold?_

_So I went for that in-between. Sometimes I was her friend. Sometimes I was her subordinate._

_And what if I had just been a little too vague, a little too cold yet a little too undermining. Should I have just picked one and stuck to it?_

A familiar voice spoke loudly and clearly, tearing through the clutches of his fever. “When she first told you she’d sacrifice herself? How did you feel?” It wasn’t Hange who spoke, but either way it had been a comfortable sound.

“My first instinct was to stop her.” Levi willed himself to answer. If he couldn’t defend himself against the voices in his head, maybe he could at least make an ally out of that one familiar voice.

“What were your last words to her?”

“Dedicate your heart. The last thing she told me before that was ‘Let me go will you.’ And I can’t help but think… If I really did value her, wouldn’t I have stopped her?”

“I saw you put your fist to her heart so that was my first guess. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard you say that when we did the salutes before. So she must have been special for you to say that right?”

“She was special. She wasn’t the disposable commander she thought she was. Somebody _has_ to be special to even be chosen a commander of the survey corps.”

“She was… And I really looked up to her. I honestly don’t even think I can do half the work she did. I’m never gonna be cut out for this type of job.”

 _You? Not cut out for the job?_ "Then what about Hange?”

* * *

“Maybe Armin would be a better commander.” It came out a whisper. And Levi could have sworn if he had entered the room one millisecond earlier, or one millisecond later, he probably would have never even heard it.

But it still stung, it still clenched at his heart, the same way it did everytime Hange did laugh off how Erwin would have done a better job at managing the long distance formation during expeditions, or how much death they could have avoided in missions if Armin had been the one to make the snap decisions.

 _Disposable Commander._ She had used the word a few times. And even it had been light, even if it had been a passing comment. It left Levi irritable for hours, maybe even days.

“Hey, are you gonna get out of bed anytime soon?” He asked then, hoping he at least managed to subdue that annoyance in his voice.

“What time is it?”

“It’s already seven.”

The conversation ended there. Levi was silent as he approached the side of her bed and pulled her up. He had been silent as he followed her out of the room, making sure to stay a safe distance behind for support.

He had been irritable and maybe a little annoyed then at hearing that once again. But maybe then, if he had spoken up then, maybe things would have ended differently.

* * *

_Before you go_

_Was there something I could've said_

_To make your heart beat better?_

_If only I'd have known you had a storm to weather_

“We’re going back.”

“Wait... Why?” It had come out as a croak, but the way Armin shook his head as he looked at him, Levi was sure he understood.

“You’re far from recovered. We shouldn’t even have been doing this in the first place,” Armin said as he started to load the supplies into the horse.

 _No. We stay. We’re almost there._ Even just trying to sit up then, had Levi shaking. _If Armin says we’re leaving, we’re leaving._ That ultimatum still had Levi fighting though.

“We were too ambitious. I can’t believe I even thought we’d find a body.” Armin crouched down and put one good hand behind Levi’s back, taking the weight of his body from Levi’s weak arms.

Levi had been too weak, too tired to even recoil as Armin gently pushed him up to a sitting position. Soon enough, he realized he didn’t have much energy to let out more than a few stilted words of protest. And eventually, he did give up.”

That one spring day was notably clear. It would have been a beautiful day to dig through depressions and swim through puddles.

But his body wasn’t his to control then. Even before he reached the horse, he had already passed out in Armin’s arms. His last view had been ocean, a beautiful shade of light blue reflecting the blue sky above.

His last thought had been the sadness at knowing something could be easily wasted by a few careless injuries.

_Maybe if I hadn’t gotten injured then, maybe I would have been able to dig through_

Then so naturally, he had ended up pondering something a little less recent ‘what-if.’

_Maybe if I hadn’t gotten injured then, maybe there wouldn’t have been remains to look for in the first place._

* * *

Armin had said back then, when it had just been two of them in the hospital room that maybe he would have been released in a week.

Back in the hospital after coming back from the mission, it was like his own progress had been reset.

He was back to square one. Just like the first time, he had woken up in the first place, once again he could barely sit up and soon he realized, standing was almost impossible in his current state.

_What the hell happened in the port?_

When Levi first came to, he hadn’t been able to process a lot of the explanations behind reinfections, internal bleedings that had manifested in a really high fever. And even when the fever dissipated, it left with Levi unseen scars and aches that were difficult to shake off.

“You’ll be here for another few months at least,” Armin said apologetically. As always, he had a gift bag with him. He propped it on the side table next to Levi’s bed.

“I should have seen that coming.” There was no point arguing or fighting. The high fever and the torturous experience that came with it had left him tired and almost desolate. _Was it worth going back there?_

Armin rummaged through the bag. “But you know... If it wasn’t for you falling into the ocean then, maybe we wouldn’t have found these. I had them cleaned up and we had them analyzed in the lab. Armin placed something heavy gently on the bed in front of Levi. "Looks like she did leave a few stuff behind.” 

Somehow, even before Armin pulled his hand back, Levi took advantage of the familiarity of the weight of the object to make a guess in that split second. “Her blades…”

“And underneath that… we managed to get a part of her cloak that got caught on the blade.”

The familiar blue and white wings of the insygnia had been overwhelmingly nostalgic to say the least. Levi’s hands were shaking and maybe he did feel the beginnings of tears in his eyes before he quickly blinked them away.

“I didn’t think you’d want to see the rest of the cloak. It was pretty much burnt away… This one stayed intact though. A miracle maybe?

Levi shook his head. “These were one of Hange’s last inventions before she completely focused on being commander. I remember testing these with her furnace in the lab. She built the blades to withstand high pressure and high heat environments, in preparation for the war with Marley… That is, before they introduced guns….” He trailed off, not wanting at all to look back at the memory then of cleaning up her lab only a few months after she unveiled such a weapon.

In the end, it had been only he and Hange who had used those blades.

Armin smiled. “But don’t you think it’s a miracle that the blade had protected the badge? And the blade held on long enough to the reefs to have not been swept by the ocean.

“Hange always did manage to come up with the most ingenious inventions.”

“And they expect me to do at least half the job she did.”

Levi noticed the slight blush and the discomfort in Armin’s face before the latter looked away. _He still had a long way to go._ Levi sat up a little straighter in bed, biting a wince. He held the badge in his hands for a few more seconds, rubbing at the worn threads. _The badge was still very recognizable at least._

“Did you notice? She was the last one to wear the wings of freedom badge… before we the plane took off? And she had been the reason why we were able to reach Eren in the first place.” _She was our wings of freedom._ He added to himself. He pressed the badge onto Armin’s hads. _“_ Don’t forget why we’re here in the first place.”

“What do you mean? Do I keep this?”

Levi looked up at the ceiling and sighed. He had never been good with words. Somehow, despite the heavy conversation in the room, it had been the confusion in Armin’s face of all things. that had made him miss Hange most profoundly in that moment.

He took a deep breath. “Now that the war is over… Now that we have our freedom, we need to rebuild right? Even if you don’t believe you can do half the job she did, keep moving forward, keep doing what you’re doing. Hange didn’t believe she did a great job either but where are we now?”

That had been enough of a pep talk at least. It had ended with Armin gripping the badge a little tighter, and maybe let out a few tears. Levi was sure it had given him a burst of energy to move on.

He had rattled off his responsibilities and his plans to a Levi who could barely understand even half of it before he left the room, promising to visit again later that afternoon.

It was only an hour or so past breakfast and Levi was familiar enough with the routine of the nurses to know he wouldn’t be seeing anyone until noon time. Armin had at least left him with a souvenir, the cold blades on his hands.

He should have been happy to even get something back from that expedition. Alone in the room with just the blades in hand, somehow Levi felt lonelier than when it had just been him.

He had initially sought comfort running his hand through the cold blade. The stainless steel of the blade, the gleaming metal had him in disbelief, pondering such cruel irony.

The steam, the fall and the trampling of the titans had reduced her to nothing. Yet that invention they had spent nights working on. That invention that had actually cut through titans skin and had fallen into the ocean with her had come out of it unscathed? Even after spending three months entrenched in the reefs below the ocean?

 _Hange must have done some type of magic at the least._ “I wish you could have used some of that magic on yourself too," Levi muttered to himself in the empty room, hoping at the very least she heard that much.

_So, before you go_

_Was there something I could've said_

_To make it all stop hurting_

_It kills me how your mind can make you feel so worthless_

_So, before you go_

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is very much appreciated!


End file.
